"You equal yourself to the sun, and make it your God, though you are greatly the superior. If you disfigure the beauty of my body, which I look upon as contemptible, He who gave it to me will one day restore it with usury."

So from the carpets spread before the throne of Sapor, Simeon was led away, but at the door waited Usthazanes; and now, as he saw the bishop pass, he threw himself on his knees, overawed by his presence; but Simeon turned his head aside, and would not even look at him. Cut to the heart, Usthazanes cried with tears "Alas! if to see Simeon's face turned from me is so dreadful, how can I bear the wrath of the God I have denied!"

He went home, clothed himself in black, and again returned to his post, where he was at once interrogated by the king, and confessed himself a Christian without further wavering. Sapor would have had him tortured, probably in hopes of making him yield and save his life, but the nobles insisted that he should die at once. He only begged that it might be proclaimed that he did not die for any crime, but for his return to the Christian profession; and this the Shah granted, thinking it would terrify the Christians. To Simeon, in his dungeon, the tidings were full of joy, and he gave thanks with uplifted hands; and then, as the Paschal feast was near, he prayed for himself that he might drink the cup of his Lord on the very day and at the hour of the Passion.

* In the Chaldee of Maruthas he is Guh Sciata Zades, which is said to mean a man of rank.

The next day was Good Friday, and he was again led to the Shah; and refusing once more to adore either him or the sun, was at once sentenced to be beheaded.

A hundred more clergy were led out to die at the same time, five of them bishops, and the rest of all the other grades. They were offered life if they would adore the sun, but they all refused, and all were put to death before the eyes of Simeon, whom the king hoped thus to terrify, but who only exhorted them all the time to persevere in the hope of the Resurrection. He and his two priests were the last; and as Hananias was taking off his garment, a shudder passed over him, on which Phusikes, the surveyor of the king's works, said, "Be firm, Hananias, shut your eyes, and in a moment you will see the divine Light of CHRIST."

This was reported to the king, and Phusikes being led before him, declared that he asked no favour but to share the death of these men; and so he did, but with far greater torture. Nor did the constant slaughter of the Christians cease from the sixth hour on Good Friday until the second Sunday after Easter. Sozomen says that 16,000 of all ages and sexes perished in an indiscriminate massacre, in which at last was included one Azades, a favourite eunuch of the king, who was so grieved at his death as to confine the persecution for the future to the clergy and the virgin deaconesses. Sapor's queen had fallen sick, and the Jew physician who attended her persuaded her that her illness was the effect of the revengeful

magic of Tharba, the sister of Simeon, and remarkable for the same unusual personal beauty.

She and her maid were arrested on this accusation. She protested that magic was equally forbidden with idolatry; and besides she said, "Why should we revenge my brother, since he only passed from perishable life to a heavenly kingdom? Besides, vengeance is also unlawful for us."

So beautiful was she, that each of her three judges separately offered to save her if she would enter their harems, but she refused them all; and when told that she might yet be pardoned if she would only adore the sun, she answered, "Never will I worship the creature instead of the Creator." She was then sentenced, and both she and her maid were actually hewn each into six parts, which were placed in baskets, and hung upon twelve stakes disposed in two rows, along which the queen was to walk to destroy the effect or the supposed enchantment!

At Adiabene, a hundred and eleven clergy and nine deaconesses were in a horrible dungeon together, where they were daily fed for six months by one rich and virtuous woman, named Yazdundocta, who, on the night before their execution, spread for them a feast in their prison, brought them each a white garment for their martyrdom, and waited on them herself; and when they were on the way to their death, she met them, throwing herself at their feet, and kissing their hands. After all had been beheaded, she caused them to be buried, five and five together, in graves at some distance from the city. After this the persecution

slackened, though not till Sadoth, the nephew and successor of Simeon, had shared his fate, at the end of nine months.

Sapor turned his attention to his foreign wars, and spent sixty-three days with all his army in a vain attempt to take Nisibis: so valiant and patient were the citizens under the exhortations of St. James, their hero bishop, who constantly encouraged them, and prayed for their safety and deliverance; though, when he was entreated to pray for the destruction of the enemy, he said he would entreat for the perishing of no man, but would only ask that God would make the weak things of the world to confound the strong.

At that moment, James' own figure, as he fearlessly passed along the walls, in his full episcopal robes, was taken by the Persians for that of the Emperor. They fancied a reinforcement had come, and a panic spread among them; and soon after, swarms of stinging flies and gnats, bred by the summer rain and heat acting upon the refuse of the camp, rendered the situation intolerable, and forced the Shah to raise the siege.

Such is the account given by Christian writers; and it is quite certain that the Christian stedfastness of Nisibis and Edessa were for at least a century the protection of the Greek and Roman world. James of Nisibis was the great infuser of this spirit. He was a man as meek and charitable as he was resolute and brave, and was specially noted for his loving care of the poor, the widow, and the fatherless.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE VICTORY.

"The Oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving;
Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving."

MILTON.

WHILE the Church in Persia was struggling and suffering, triumph and peace had come to the Churches of the Roman empire.

We pass over the horrors of the long persecution begun by Diocletian, and carried on by Maximin ; and Constantine, though he assumed the purple in Gaul, does not especially belong to the Churches of St. John, save that as Emperor his power told upon their condition, and they reaped the full benefit of his proclamation of peace to the Christians, and the example of his profession of faith.

The faith was not merely tolerated, it was owned as the dominant power; the doors of the heathen temples were not closed by authority, but were left